Title Karafuto as a Border Island of the Empire of Japan: In Comparison with Okinawa Author(s) Amano, Naoki Citation Eurasia Border Review, 10(1), 3-19 Issue Date 2019 DOI 10.14943/ebr.10.1.3 Doc URL http://hdl.handle.net/2115/78138 Type bulletin (article) File Information V10N1_02-Amano.pdf Instructions for use Hokkaido University Collection of Scholarly and Academic Papers : HUSCAP Karafuto as a Border Island of the Empire of Japan: In Comparison with Okinawa Naoki Amano Abstract This paper aims at reconsidering the history of Karafuto (the southern part of Sakhalin Island under Japanese rule) from the viewpoint of border studies. I will review the history of Karafuto (1905– 1945) as a border island of the Empire of Japan in comparison to another Japanese border island, Okinawa. This historical research allows us to develop some characteristics which define border islands. Firstly, border islands were always in an unstable situation: they could be incorporated into or excluded from the homeland, depending on the wishes of the central government. Secondly, border islands needed close co-operation with large corporations from the economic core of the homeland during the process of internalization and colonization. Thirdly, political internalization and economic colonization of border islands could be inconsistent. Paradoxically, it is because they were politically incorporated into the homeland that border islands could be de-bordered and economically excluded from the homeland market. Introduction This paper aims at reconsidering the history of Karafuto in comparison with Okinawa. Karafuto is the Japanese name for the southern part of Sakhalin Island, which is located north of Hokkaido, Japan. Although the island is now governed by the Russian Federation, the southern part, below the 50th parallel north, belonged to the Japanese Empire from 1905 to 1945. As this paper focuses on the history of the southern part of Sakhalin Island under the Japanese Empire, it will refer to Karafuto. Over the past decade, a considerable number of studies on Karafuto history have been conducted in Japan.1 I have also published several works based on empirical research concerning Naoki Amano is Associate Professor of Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Yamagata University. He can be contacted at: [email protected] 1 Masafumi Miki, Iju-gata shokuminch Karafuto no Keisei [Study of Japanese Settlement Colony of Karafuto] (Tokyo: Hanawa Shobo, 2012); Teruyuki Hara, ed., Nichiro Senso to Sakhalin-to [The Russo-Japanese War and Sakhalin Island] (Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press, 2012); Taisho Nakayama, Akantai Shokuminchi Karafuto no Imin Shakai Keisei: Shuen-teki National Identity to Shokumichi Ideology [Formation of Settlement Society in Karafuto as a Subarctic Colony: Peripheral National Identity and Colonial Ideology] (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2014); Taisho Nakayama, Sakhalin zanryu nihonjin to sengo Nihon: Karafuto jumin no kyokai chiikishi [Japanese Left Behind in Sakhalin and Postwar Japan: A Border Area History of the Karafuto People] (Tokyo: Kokusai Shoin, 2019). DOI: 10.14943/ebr.10.1.3 3 Eurasia Border Review < Article > various, restricted, periods of Karafuto history.2 In this paper, based on these previous works, I would like to reconsider the history of Karafuto from the viewpoint of border studies. To analyze the historical experience of Karafuto, I will introduce the concept of “border islands.” Border islands are literally located on national borders. Border islands have common features as islands called insularity: oceanic, small, and remote.3 The insularity, especially the remoteness, can create a border between the islands and their homeland in the legal and administrative system.4 The internal border, as will be stated later, also divides human groups between the homeland people and among ethnic groups or classes inside the islands. In addition to this insularity, let me point out a feature of border-islandness: uneasiness. The uneasiness of border islands refers to unstable status or functions of the islands, and the complex identities of islanders. The uneasiness stems from the bordering / de-bordering / re-bordering process on border islands. The central government can include or exclude the border islands into / from their homeland due to national security and the benefit / cost of rule. The geopolitical strategy of the central government can make border islands a fortress or sacrificial stones defending the mainland. If an empire aims at further expansion in the direction of border islands, the islands can function as bases of imperial actions or just stepping-stones. If the imperial government regards border islands as stepping- stones, the government pays less strategical attention to the peripheral islands. When such islands are exposed to invasion by foreign powers, the islands are likely to be discarded and to function as sacrificial stones in order to delay the invasion of the homeland. The uneasiness of border islands affects the identity of the island people.5 Their identity is diverse and often conflicting. Some border island people may show strong loyalty to the nation called peripheral nationalism, fearing being discarded and excluded from the country. Others on the same island may regard themselves as different from the homeland people and even view their island as a 2 Naoki Amano, “Misuterareta shima deno senso: kyokai no ningen / ningen no kyokai [A War in a Discarded Island: People on a Border / Borders between the People],” in Nichiro-senso to Sakhalin-to, ed. Hara, 35–64; Naoki Amano, “Sakhalin / Karafuto: the Colony between Empires,” in Borders and Transborder Processes in Eurasia, eds. Sergei V. Sevastianov et al. (Vladivostok: Dalnauka, 2013), 119–132; Naoki Amano, “Karafuto ni okeru kokunai-shokuminchi no keisei: kokunaika to shokuminchika [Formation of Internal Colony in Karafuto: Internalization and Colonization],” Teikoku Nihon no ido to doin [Mobilities and Mobilizations in the Empire of Japan], eds. Hajime Imanishi and Kazuyuki Iizuka (Osaka: Osaka University Press, 2018), 113–144; Teruyuki Hara and Naoki Amano, eds., Karafuto 40-nen no Rekishi [Forty Years History of Karafuto] (Tokyo: Karafuto Renmei, 2017), 2–42, 272–331. 3 Hiroshi Kakazu, Toshogaku [Nissology] (Tokyo: Kokonshoin, 2019), 3. 4 For the legal and administrative differences in Japanese islands, see Masaya Takaesu, Kindai Nihon no chiho tochi to “tosho” [The Rule over Locals and Islands of Modern Japan] (Tokyo: Yumani Shobo, 2009). 5 Tessa Morris-Suzuki wrote a paper on Karafuto identity, but she analyzed the view of the homeland Japanese toward the Karafuto people much more than the identity of the Karafuto people. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, “Northern Lights: the Making and Unmaking of Karafuto Identity,” The Journal of Asian Studies 60:3 (2001): 645–671. For well-balanced explanations of the Okinawan identity, see Richard Siddle, “Colonialism and Identity in Okinawa before 1945,” Japanese Studies 18:2 (1998): 117–133. 4 Naoki Amano colony of the mainland. This colonial identity does not only stem from the inferiority to the homeland, but from the pride of their cultural uniqueness.6 Typical border islands in the Japanese Empire were Karafuto and the Okinawa Islands.7 Karafuto served as the border between the Japanese Empire and Russia / USSR on the island, while Okinawa is located at the southern edge of Japan. In this paper I will analyze the history of Karafuto as a border island in comparison with Okinawa. The first section describes the common historical experiences of Karafuto and Okinawa in the second half of nineteenth century. The Tokugawa shogunate and the new Meiji government both had to contend with the process of bordering and re- bordering their national territory. The subjects of this bordering and re-bordering included the border islands of Karafuto (Sakhalin Island) and the Ryukyu / Okinawa. During this process these border islands were in an unstable situation with ambiguous relations to the main body of Japan proper. These relations, moreover, were also affected by the West and subsequent Japanese expansion. The second section highlights the processes for the internalizing and colonizing of Karafuto in the 1920s. To internalize Karafuto, or make Karafuto a true “Japanese” territory, the Empire of Japan tried to settle labor migrants throughout the border island. These migrations were also necessary to colonize Karafuto, or make Karafuto an economic dependency of the imperial core. These mutual processes saved Karafuto from depression after Figure 1: Japanese Karafuto 6 Amano, “Sakhalin / Karafuto: the Colony between Empires,” 119–121; Tadashi Anno, “Gendai Russia no tainichi nationalism: Sakhalin-shu gikai no katsudo wo chushinni [Nationalism against Japan in the Present Russia: A Case of Members of the Sakhalin oblast assembly],” in Azia ni sekkinsuru Russia: sono jittai to imi [Russia Moving towards Asia: the Realities and Meanings], eds. Hiroshi Kimura and Shigeki Hakamada (Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press, 2007), 188–210. 7 Hokkaido is not an “island.” Though the area of Hokkaido (78, 073km2) is a little larger than that of Sakhalin Island (76,400km2), the Hokkaido people do not identify themselves as island people. This shows the relativity of smallness as insularity. This insularity depends not only on geographical scale, but also on the size of population, the degree of cultivation, and status as a main island or not. Well cultivated, Hokkaido has more than five million inhabitants and a lot of rito (remote islands or islands annex). By the end of World War II, Hokkaido had been well internalized into the homeland and regarded as an integral part of Japan, and its people did not feel the uneasiness of border island. 5 Eurasia Border Review < Article > World War I, although the postwar recession led to Okinawa’s economic collapse. In the third section I will examine the re-bordering of the Empire of Japan during wartime and the influence of this process on Karafuto. The Empire of Japan tried to expand its sphere of influence and consolidate the Dai Toa Kyoeiken (the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere) in the late 1930s and the early 1940s.